A woman spoke to Crime Stoppers on multiple occasions about a missing teenager but did not receive a call back from police for more than 20 years, a trial has been told.
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The woman claims she met the teen during a chance encounter at a train station in June 2002 - the same month she disappeared.
During the meeting, the girl revealed that the man now accused of murdering her would tie her to a bed and have sex with her after getting her drunk in the company of his wife, the woman told a court on Tuesday.
The man and his wife, now aged in their 60s, are facing a judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court at Wagga Wagga, having pleaded not guilty to murdering the intellectually disabled teenager when she was 19.
In late 2000, the girl moved onto the couple's property and formed a sexual relationship with the then 40-year-old man, ultimately becoming pregnant and having a child, the court was told earlier.
Prosecutors allege the couple murdered the teen to keep her baby as their own.
The teen was last seen at her flat in a nearby rural town on June 2, 2002, and a police investigation was launched into her disappearance, with the couple, who cannot be named for legal reasons, eventually charged with murder in May 2022.
Appearing as a witness in the trial on Tuesday, the woman said she had spoken with the teen for several hours when they met by chance at Cootamundra train station.
"I was holding a bathroom door open for her and she thanked me," she said.
"We began chatting. She was travelling alone with her baby."
The woman said at the time she would have been roughly the same age as the missing girl, having just been accepted into university.
"There was a delay at the station so we just got chatting to the point where we decided to go out for lunch together," she said.
During their conversation, the missing teen revealed she had received a gift for her baby from the wife of the child's father.
"I found it shocking. I was shocked by that comment," the woman said.
"I asked her how the wife knew about the baby, and then she started to talk about how the husband and wife were in her life and would visit her flat."
The girl said the couple would bring alcohol with them and they would all drink until she was drunk, the court was told.
"(She said) that the wife would then go home, and that the husband would tie her to the bed and have sex with her," the woman recounted.
Soon after the meeting, the woman saw the girl's face on the news reporting she was missing.
The woman called Crime Stoppers at least three times - in 2002, again in 2008, and on one other occasion the date of which she could not recall - but was not contacted back by anybody until this year, the court was told.
More recently, the woman said she had again seen reports of the missing teenager on television and had again intended to call Crime Stoppers.
"Because no one had called me after my three calls, I wasn't sure if my information would be helpful or not," she said.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
Australian Associated Press
